Jack Brymer

Jack Brymer, who has died aged 88, was one of the finest clarinettists of the past half-century. His professional career started when Sir Thomas Beecham appointed him principal clarinet of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and it went on to include extensive concerto, chamber music and recital work.

Brymer was unusual in that he came from the world of amateur music and jazz, and brought to his orchestral playing a particularly warm and flexible tone. He considered it essential to be a musician first and a clarinettist second, and it was his outstanding musicianship, as well as his rich sound, that made his playing so memorable.

Born in South Shields, Brymer shared his birthday with Mozart, a composer of particular significance to him. He first began to play on his father's clarinet as an inquisitive four-year-old, and went on to make his own discoveries of music and instrumental technique without formal tuition. Struggling with an inadequate instrument (a sharp-pitch A clarinet with a bit sawn off in the school woodwork room) and playing in local bands and amateur orchestras with people much older than himself, he learned his craft in the most practical way.

This meant that when he finally acquired a good pair of instruments, after some 13 years of playing, he had already mastered many of the problems that he might encounter later. He recalled buying his first pair of Boosey & Hawkes 1010s for £19, handing over his old battered instruments in part exchange, together with all his savings and £2 extracted from the gas meter.

He trained as a teacher of general subjects, specialising in music, at Goldsmiths College, London University, and went on to teach at Heath Clark School, Croydon, while at the same time taking part in a great deal of amateur music-making.

He received much encouragement and orchestral experience from playing under Frederick Haggis in the Goldsmiths College orchestra, and from Ernest Read in the Ernest Read Symphony Orchestra. It was at Goldsmiths that he first met Joan Richardson, a violinist and viola player. They married in 1939, and Joan travelled with him all over the world throughout his career.

At the beginning of the second world war, the school was evacuated to Eastbourne, but when things began to look dangerous it was transferred to Llanelli, Wales. In 1940, he joined the RAF as a physical training instructor, doing his basic training at Uxbridge. During his years of service, he met and played with many professional musicians, but returned to teaching once the war was over. They must have talked about his playing - though nobody ever admitted to it - because one day in July 1947 there was a surprise telephone call from Beecham requesting that Brymer audition the next day for the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. He was immediately appointed principal clarinettist as successor to Reginald Kell, and held the appointment for the next 16 years.

These years with Beecham were his golden period, packed with outstanding musical experiences, some of them far from comfortable, as he recounted in his autobiography From Where I Sit (1979). After Beecham's death in 1961, he became co-principal clarinet in the BBC Symphony Orchestra (1963-71), and principal in the London Symphony Orchestra (1971-86).

Brymer was a founder-member of the Wigmore Ensemble, the Prometheus Ensemble and the London Baroque Ensemble, director of the London Wind Soloists, and a member of the Tuckwell Wind Quartet and the Robles Ensemble. He also taught at the Royal Academy of Music, the Royal Military School of Music at Kneller Hall and the Guildhall School of Music.

He recorded all the wind music of Mozart, including the Clarinet Concerto three times. The version he remembered with the most pleasure was the first, made in one session in 1958 under Beecham. Several works were written for him, including Three Pieces and a Clarinet Quintet by Armstrong Gibbs; Roundelay by Alan Richardson; and Guy Woolfenden's Clarinet Concerto.

In his later years, Brymer broadened his musical activities, describing himself as a "soloist, chamber music player, teacher, orchestral player, broadcaster, quizzer, lecturer, disc jockey, jazz fan, saxophone quartet leader, transport organiser and map-reader, agent, accountant and tax-gatherer for HM government". He relished the humorous moments thrown up by musical life, as once when he was late for a concert and hailed a taxi driver. "Albert Hall," he yelled, "as quick as you can, or quicker!" The driver didn't seem impressed. "How many in yer outfit?" he asked. "Ninety," he was told. "Blimey, mate," he said, "they won't 'arf miss yer!" He spoke truer than he knew.

Jack Brymer is survived by his wife and his son Timothy.

Alan Hacker writes: Jack Brymer took the London postwar musical scene by storm. Vibrato, fairly new to classical wind-playing, was the most obvious and novel aspect of his style. The legendary oboist Leon Goossens, a member of Beecham's pre-war orchestra, was the first wind player noted for vibrato. In using it, he was copying Fritz Kreisler, who (according to Carl Flesch) had been the first violinist to play with continuous vibrato. Goossens' colleague Reginald Kell then took the idea on board, though Brymer told me he was playing the clarinet with vibrato before Kell.

Vibrato was by no means all, though. Brymer's hallmark as a clarinettist was a very soft-textured tone, which he aimed to produce at all dynamic levels. And most important of all, his playing had a remarkable presence. Part of that could be put down to the ease of his playing and a resonance of tone that no follower could quite achieve. Like other members of the "Royal Family", as the woodwind section of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra was called, his sound was expressive and instantly recognisable, even in just one solo note.

An uncle of mine had been a fellow teacher in South Shields. Through this connection, I was thrilled at the age of 16 to have a letter from the great Jack Brymer. I became one of his students at the Royal Academy of Music, and went to hear him in concerts as often as possible.

In a clarinet solo from an orchestral work by Dvorak, the older generation of British and continental players produced a woody folk colour, whereas Brymer would create a soft romantic impression. I would wait with bated breath for his solos to begin. "Float the tone," he would often say, emphasising the "idyll" rather than the "epic" - Berlioz's terms for the clarinet's main characteristics.

The composer Harrison Birtwistle, also a Brymer pupil, says that the most important achievement of an instrumentalist is to bring about new compositions (by analogy with Stadler for Mozart, and Mühlfeld for Brahms). But, surely, it is also creative for a performer to influence other performers. "Alan is swimming against the stream," Jack would say. But it was his confidence and the natural relationship he had with his instrument that encouraged me in my way.

Jack Brymer, clarinettist, born January 27 1915; died September 16 2003